Zoom
John was distantly aware of the arrival of reinforcements but most of his attention was focussed on the clone of his father. They'd been evenly matched before the clone had used the stolen Quantum Morpher; with the morpher augmenting his skills and strength, the clone overmatched John by a factor that John didn't even want to consider. All he could do was dodge, duck, avoid and hope like hell someone would be able to help him. But with the sheer weight in numbers of the Cyclobots, he knew that was unlikely.
The clone lined up another attempt at separating John's head from his shoulders and then, to John's surprise, hesitated. Before he could really process that, the morph flickered a couple of times and then died altogether, leaving the clone looking surprised and alarmed.
"I guess it's just not gonna be your day," John decided. Taking advantage of the clone's distraction, he launched a punch straight for the clone's unprotected head. There was a look of pure terror on the clone's face and then John found his fist going straight through the familiar visage as the clone turned to goo.
÷
Zaskin turned away from the console where he'd deactivated the clones' cohesion signal and stared at the young man who'd entered with The Master. "Why aren't you goo?" he asked.
The young man made no response.
"Not a clone," Alex commented as he dumped The Master's insensate body onto the stasis couch. "Just at a guess." He turned the stasis field on, ensuring The Master would cause no further problems.
The young man rolled his eyes but still said nothing.
"So why isn't he saying or doing anything?" Zaskin enquired.
"You said The Master was a temporal copy of me." Zaskin nodded. "From about two week's time – as far as I'm concerned." Zaskin nodded again. "Oh shit." Alex groaned. Before Zaskin could say anything, the Time Force Major added, "Alpha: Offline."
Suddenly the young man's pose relaxed and he sighed. "What was that, anyway?"
"Never mind that, who are you?" Zaskin asked.
"I'm Namir – the real one."
"I'd spotted that." Zaskin shook his head. "Are you a rescue attempt?"
"Sorta."
÷
With the last of the clones turned to pink goo, the remaining Cyclobots were no match for the combined forces of the Silver Guardians, the Time Force Rangers and the Vengeance Rangers and in short order, the battle was over.
"What happened?" JJ asked, surveying the carnage.
"Looks like Namir found Dr Zaskin," Lucas suggested.
"Or The Master's playing with us," muttered Kimberly.
"Wouldn't be the first time," said Ben.
"There's an easy way to settle this," Alice stated. She pushed the communicate button on her morpher. "Namir?"
"Go ahead, Ali."
"How's things looking inside?"
"All secure," came the reply. "I'm with Dr Zaskin and someone you just have to see to believe."
"What about The Master?" asked Wes.
"He's secured," Namir answered. "And out cold."
"Do I want to know?" Lucas asked.
"It's an interesting story," Namir admitted. "How're things out there?"
"All clear," Alice answered. "No more Cyclobots and no more clones. We're on our way in." She cut the connection. "Speaking for me, I think it's time we got to hear that interesting story."
"I couldn't agree more," said Lucas.
÷
Namir looked at Zaskin and then Alex. "Well," he said, "they're coming."
"And you're certainly right about one thing, Namir," Zaskin replied, "it's going to be an interesting story."
Alex shook his head. "You don't know the half of it."
÷
Wes followed Alice's lead through the complex. A distant corner of his mind was horrified at this revisitation of Eric's past, conscious that this was the latest in a long series of kicks Eric had received in the last two months. The rest of his mind was occupied by wondering just how to jump ahead of the queue and beat The Master to a pulp for what he had done.
The dimly lit hallway opened out into the main hall of the processing plant and the first thing Wes saw was a stasis couch with an occupant lying on it. Then he spotted Zaskin, Namir and a third person, who was standing with his back to the hallway door. Where was The Master?
"Nam?" Alice was calling. "What's going on?"
"It's a very, very long story," answered the person with Namir and Zaskin and Wes felt his gut chill to cryogenic levels.
It couldn't, shouldn't, be him. Surely? But he'd done it before, hadn't he? Faked his own death and hidden. Why not this time? And then the speaker was turning and Wes found himself once more staring at the face of his descendant.
"You bastard!" Wes was beyond angry. "This is all your fault!" He started forwards, fully intending to knock Alex's head off. It had to be the other man's fault. How many times had he manipulated situations or obfuscated to get what he wanted?
"It's not his fault, Wes," Lucas yelled.
Wes barely heard him.
"He didn't do it!" Namir put in, stepping in front of Alex.
"Get out of the way and let me deal with that son of a bitch," Wes hissed.
"Wes, no!"
Not for the first time in his life, Wes found himself being restrained by Katie. "Let me go." Wes wished he hadn't demorphed.
"Not until you quit being a butthead," Katie snapped. "This isn't his fault."
"He lied, Katie. It was all his fault."
"Wes, listen to me," said Lucas. "This mess is not Alex's fault."
"Then why is he here?" Wes demanded, struggling against Katie's hold.
"That," said Zaskin, speaking for the first time, "I can explain."
"If it helps you, Wes," Alex said softly, "The Master kidnapped me during Merle Askot's trial. Today is supposed to be the day Pieter van Zyl begins prosecution."
That brought Wes up short. "How?"
Alex shrugged. "I was crossing the Quadrant, heading for the Supreme Court. The next thing I remember is waking up here, about an hour ago, when Dr Zaskin brought me out of stasis and told me what was going on."
"So what is going on?" Alice asked. "And who's now in stasis?"
"That," said Namir, "is The Master. And he's absolutely one hundred percent crazy."
"Raise a hand if you're surprised by that announcement," Ben mumbled.
"But who is he?" Trip asked. "He has to be someone who really knows us." He gestured to the Time Force rangers.
"Oh, he's that all right," Namir agreed.
"Since you seem to know most about it, Nam," said Lucas, "how about you start these 'interesting' explanations?"
÷
For a second or two, the world dipped and swayed around Al. It was an unpleasant sensation, but it was only as he felt someone guiding him to a seat that he realised he had swayed with it.
"What's wrong?" Rob asked.
"Something's changed," Al answered. He blinked a couple of times and frowned. "The future's shifting."
"How can you tell?" Ven demanded. "That's something only a temporal expert could say for certain."
Al gave her a sour look. "I have a dual set of memories," he replied. "I remember what happened during Askot's trial."
"Not following you," said Rob, frowning. "What are you talking about?"
Al swallowed as bile suddenly hit the back of his throat as more of the new memories made themselves known. "I remember having to file reports the morning of Jen's testimony, which was why I missed it. But I also remember walking across the Quadrant and being grabbed from behind and waking up on a stasis couch. Here."
"What?" Ven looked incredulous. "What do you mean?"
"I mean The Master abducted me. An earlier me."
"Why?" Rob asked.
"To change history," Al answered simply. "And it's working." Al found himself grinning. "But not in the way The Master wanted."
÷
Alex found himself feeling thoroughly nauseated as Namir's explanations wound down. No matter what anyone else said, this was, ultimately, his fault. Something he had done – or would do, he wasn't entirely sure on that point – had created The Master, and The Master had been the one to cause all of this chaos.
"What do we do now?" Alice asked, breaking the silence that had fallen. "What do we do with The Master?"
But no-one had an answer for either of her questions, Alex realised. It was clear that whatever else they'd been expecting, this was not it. And then the solution to the whole mess became clear to him and he suddenly wanted to kick himself for not having seen it sooner.
"Send me back," he said.
"What?" Lucas looked blank.
"Send me back," Alex repeated. "To my own time. To Askot's trial."
It was Trip who first tracked the importance of what he was suggesting. "You can't do that!" he objected. "You'd be changing the future – the one thing Time Force is supposed to prevent."
Alex gestured to the assembled crowd with a wave of his hand. "Nothing you've told me suggests this is a future that's worth protecting." He sighed. "Besides, with what I already know, the future's going to change. Unless you're some how going to produce a memory tech and adapt my memories?"
Lucas slowly shook his head. "We don't have one here and if you're right, there's no way to get one here."
"I am right," Alex answered. "Anything we do right now changes the future. Let me change it and make sure this doesn't happen."
"Let him," said Wes softly, cutting across another protest from Trip. "What have we got to lose?"
"Billions of people die," said Trip. "Zaskin could…"
"I can't do memory adaptation," said Zaskin shaking his head. "It's one thing to modify a white noise generator to break down fake memories, it's something else to jemmy around inside someone's mind with retro-fitted hardware. I could end up turning the victim into a living vegetable, or worse. And in this case, I don't see that helps us any."
"It doesn't," Lucas agreed.
"Then let him go back and change things," said Kim. "If he can."
"I can," Alex promised.
"Send him back," said Ben. "Let him make this right; cos I sure don't believe this is 'right'."
"How?" Nadira asked.
"What about the time ship?" asked Rick.
"That would be a bit obvious," Katie pointed out. "Landing a time ship in the middle of the Quadrant would…"
"Would be a bit like waving a flag and saying 'Hi, illegal time incursion going on'," finished Alice with a grin.
"That won't have been how The Master abducted me, anyway," said Alex shaking his head. "He'll have done it quietly and discreetly."
"Then it'll have been a direct portal generator." From the expression on Rick's face, Alex guessed the younger man wasn't sure how he knew that information, or why.
Alex nodded. "That would be my guess."
"And do you have any guesses what The Master would have done with it when he'd finished?" asked Wes sharply.
Alex gave a lopsided sort of smile. "It's somewhere here, hidden in plain sight. The Master's crazy and he's arrogant enough to figure Zaskin wouldn't recognise a portal generator."
"I wouldn't," Zaskin agreed. Then he smiled a little sheepishly. "But it's probably not in the lab here; I've probably messed with every item of future tech here." At the sound of a couple of groans, he shrugged. "I had to do something to look busy, even if I wasn't planning on doing what The Master had asked me to do."
"It could be just about anywhere else, though," said Rick with a grimace. "It's only about this big across." And he held his fingers a scant inch apart.
Alex blinked. "They've got a lot smaller in between my time and yours." Then he frowned as something else dropped into his mind. "You might find it with a book. I was holding the book when The Master grabbed me and, well…"
"No book now," Lucas finished. "All right, we need that generator, and we know what we're looking for."
"You're going to do this?" Trip asked.
"We don't have a choice," Lucas answered.
"What sort of book?" Ben asked.
"It's a diary," Wes said, provoking a couple of surprised looks. "Isn't it?"
Alex nodded, not surprised Wes had guessed that much.
"Let's get searching," said Alice, preventing any further comment. "The sooner we find this thing, the sooner this can all just be a bad memory."
The next fifteen minutes saw every person present scouring the whole complex, inside and out, searching for the portal generator. It was Namir who finally found it, in a small cell-like room not far from the main laboratory. It seemed to be where The Master had been sleeping, to judge from the tumbled pallet and untidy heap of laundry in the corner, Alex guessed when Namir led him to it.
"Couldn't see the book," Namir said, "but unlike Dr Zaskin, I know a portal generator when I see one." And he waved a hand at the small black device sitting on top of the nightstand. "Guess he didn't want to be parted from it."
Alex pulled open the nightstand drawer. Inside was the diary, which he held up for Namir to see. "Not so far apart."
"No." Namir frowned. "I remember seeing that book at home, before this whole craziness started. You really are my dad." There was a hurt tone to Namir's voice. "Why didn't you and mom tell me?"
Alex shrugged awkwardly. "I don't know."
"Make me a promise," Namir demanded. "Promise me that's one thing you'll do differently second time around."
Alex smiled faintly. "That's an easy promise to make."
÷
Lucas waited patiently in the main lab. He had no doubts that Namir had found the device, nor was he entirely surprised that it was Namir who found it. Lucas smiled wryly. Something told him telling Namir he was very like his father wouldn't go down too well right now, particularly if the comparison was being made between him and the insane temporal copy.
"It's found?" Wes' voice was tight with far too many emotions. Looking up, though, Lucas could only see blankness on Wes' face.
We've all been pushed too far. "It's found," he agreed.
"Damn it," Wes muttered, that blank shell cracking for just a moment. "I really thought…I really thought he was dead."
"You can understand why Alex wanted to hide, though," Lucas pointed out.
Wes snorted. "Yeah."
"But you still blame him."
"Lucas, it's his fucking clone that's done all this to me and to my friends and to my family. Shit," Wes exclaimed, "he nearly damn well killed my wife; he might as well have killed my best friend for all that's left of him. He did kill my dad. And let's not forget what that bastard's done to my kids."
"It's not going to happen again." Alex's voice was soft. Lucas turned to see Alex standing just inside the laboratory. He now entered, but all his attention was on Wes, whose expression was once more blank and emotionless. "I don't know what I – he – was thinking when he made the decisions that ended you all up here. All I do know is I'm going to make damn sure it doesn't happen again." He smiled faintly. "And if that means learning how to live as Alex Collins, descendant of the famous Wes Collins, I guess that's what I gotta do."
Lucas expected Wes to make some sort of harsh response to that, but to his surprise, Wes actually smiled. "I'll hold you to that," he warned.
It seemed to be some sort of private joke because it provoked a chuckle from Alex. "Not this time you won't." So saying, he gently lobbed a leather-bound book to Wes. "I think this thing's dominated my life long enough. Have it back."
Wes nodded, but said nothing more.
"It's time," said Alex.
"Shouldn't we wait for everyone else to get back?" Lucas asked, frowning.
Alex shrugged. "What's the point? As soon as I leave here…"
"…We cease to exist," Lucas finished. "I know. It just seems there ought to be more to it than this. You're about to change the world."
Alex shrugged. "No I'm not. I'm about to change the far future, for the better. Maybe someday I'll tell you guys about it."
"Make it a real long time before you do," said Wes. "We don't need to know when you talk to us in your office."
"I'll do that," Alex promised.
"You're sure this is going to work?" Lucas answered.
"Positive," Alex replied, thumbing the portal generator on. A silvery time portal opened in the centre of the room. "This thing goes two ways. From here to 3001 and from 3001 to here. It's pretty basic."
"All right." Lucas nodded. "Good luck."
"Thanks."
And without another word, Alex stepped through the portal…
…and found himself in an alleyway not far from TFHQ. No sooner had he arrived than the portal disappeared and the portal generator winked out of existence, the last aspect left of that ruined future gone in the blink of an eye. A quick call to Time Force's central computer via his wrist comm. confirmed that not only was he in the right place, but also the right time. He breathed a sigh of relief. For all the certainty he'd expressed to Lucas, he had been doubtful all the same, given how far The Master seemed to have planned this whole mess. "But then again," he muttered, "The Master is arrogant enough to figure I wouldn't be a factor."
He ran his fingers through his hair and frowned. "First things first," he decided. "If I'm going to beat a conspiracy, I'm going to need some co-conspirators."
TO BE CONCLUDED…